Oct 29 Nintendo News Roundup - Miitomo, Nintendo Account, and more!

Nintendo released a ton of news this week regarding a future roadmap of sorts for their company. Since the untimely passing of Iwata, the big "N" has been pretty silent this Fall, minus the apology for delaying Star Fox WiiU. This week we learn that Nintendo has many projects in the pipeline, some we are excited to hear about, others are just a teaser. Let's go in order of what is coming soon your gaming world.

National 3DS StreetPass Weekend starts tomorrow, October 30th

StreetPass is one of my favorite things about the Nintendo 3DS system. It adds a social aspect to mobile gaming, that I never knew I wanted. I have a great time finding puzzle pieces, catching fish, and seeing who shows up at my Mii Plaza. Check out the announcement from Nintendo about this weekend's event:

"Super Spooky StreetPass Weekend – Skip the tricks this Halloween and head straight to the treats with National StreetPass Weekend. Stop by any of the more than 29,000 Nintendo Zone hotspots across North America with your StreetPass-enabled Nintendo 3DS system from Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 – you could get up to six StreetPass tags! Collect more Mii characters to help you battle ghouls and ghosts in Monster Manor and Battleground Z, or pick up enemy tokens for StreetSmash in the Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS game. If you’re playing the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer game, you might even run into Filly, a special character who is currently only available from Nintendo Zone. And that’s not all! To celebrate the launch of the YO-KAI WATCH game on Nov. 6, a spooky new YO-KAI WATCH panel is coming to the Puzzle Swap game in StreetPass Mii Plaza! So when you’re out and about over the Halloween weekend, be sure to take your Nintendo 3DS system with you – you never know who you might find with the StreetPass feature! Find a hotspot near you here:http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/nintendozone"

Super Mario Maker is getting a free update on November 4th

Checkpoint flag appears when shaking the arrow tool.

The beloved create your own Mario game has announced a free update coming next week. This update allows you to install checkpoint flags in your levels (something that was severely needed) and allowing you to tweak the power-up blocks. The power-up block is an interesting fix, because it was something I noticed right away when I first played the game. This new update allows you to dictate what comes out of the box depending on if Mario is regular Mario or Super Mario. There are more improvements, including a classic mini-game from the SNES days. Check out the video below:

More Games coming to 3DS / WiiU this year

Wait, what? Today is October 29th, and nothing has been said about any other major release. Nintendo is stating that more unannounced games will be releasing before the end of 2015 for both the WiiU and 3DS systems. They cannot be possibly talking about any sleeper AAA titles, but most likely indie e-Shop games. For the record, Nintendo has a couple decent titles to release this year:

Maybe we will get some more Virtual Console titles, or remakes? I would be open to that. Still it would be amazing if they kept secret a 2-D Metroid or something and just came out of nowhere with the release. These games above, plus the unannounced releases should be plenty to get any Nintendo gamer through the holiday season.

Nintendo will release it's first mobile game in early 2016

Well, I can't say it's what I really wanted to see for a Nintendo mobile game, but at least they are starting to move to the platform. Miitomo is a freemium social app that allows chatting and displaying of Miis on your smartphone. Miis will communicate with each other without you knowing, and uses data about yourself to strike up conversations with other people. Nintendo says this will allow for "unexpected relationships" to occur. This was originally slated for 2015, but unfortunately will be delayed until March 2016.

THE NEW CLUB NINTENDO REPLACEMENT IS CALLED "NINTENDO ACCOUNT" AND WILL LAUNCH IN MARCH OF 2016.

Image courtesy of NintendoEverything.com

It's about time! I miss club Nintendo, not many other companies have loyalty reward programs anymore, and I always felt that Nintendo had some really cool stuff to offer. I'm really excited by the graphic above, especially where it says playing games will earn you points. What I really hope is that this all ties into a unified "Nintendo Account" that controls achievements, purchases, and more. Think Xbox Live account or PlayStation Network. This is long overdue, and I hope this integration starts with the Nintendo NX system most likely to be announced at E3 in 2016. Overall, don't count Nintendo out yet! There is plenty of content coming both this year, and in 2016 to look forward to playing.